Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Rebel Dreams_ Enemy Lines I - Aaron Allston [76]
“Did that keep you from having a connection, or did it simply make you mad at her?”
“That’s a stupid question.”
“If you say so. But you can reach out to her at any time, and, click, you’ll be connected again.” Tears filled Tahiri’s eyes and she turned away. “There’s a point where you realize that you’ve had the last talk you’re ever going to have with someone you love. That he’s gone. Have you realized that about your mom? Has she realized that about you?”
Jaina’s own vision blurred with tears. Her resolve finally gone, she reached out for Tahiri and pulled her close. “It’s not that way,” she said, the words having a hard time working their way around the sudden knot in her throat. “It isn’t.”
“If you say so.” Tahiri held her in return for several long moments, then pulled away, not meeting Jaina’s eyes. “I need to go get cleaned up.”
ELEVEN
Borleias Occupation, Day 39
“My name,” the man said, “is Sharr Latt. I’m a Wraith.”
He was a bit over average height, with hair that was just a few degrees of color away from pure white, worn in a slightly shaggy haircut. His eyes were blue and amused; his features belonged to the sort of comic entertainer who abused his audience and got laughs from it. He wore red pants and vest, a sky-blue long-sleeved shirt and boots; a broad red swath of cloth, more decorative than functional, served him as a belt, and a matching headband circled his brow. His accent belonged to the lower-class humans of Coruscant, and the smile on his face could have been interpreted as insincere or mocking—or both.
Jaina turned to the man’s companion. This being was a Gamorrean, one of the thick-bodied, snout-nosed, tusk-mouthed humanoids to be found fighting battles or doing low-complexity jobs all over the galaxy. This Gamorrean wore anonymous brown garments of human styling. “And is this one a Wraith, too?” Jaina asked, joking.
“I am,” the Gamorrean answered. Jaina jumped. Many Gamorreans understood Basic, but their vocal cords were not adequate to let them speak it. The Gamorrean continued, “My name is Voort saBinring. You can call me Piggy.”
There was a certain mechanical inflection to Piggy’s voice that led Jaina to believe his speech was artificially augmented. That would explain things. To cover for her sudden discomfiture, she shook each of their hands in turn, then asked, “So, what are we doing today?”
Sharr pointed through the blue-tinted window out into the jungle beyond the blackness of the kill zone. “We’re going out there. We’ll find a pool fed by cool underground springs. We’ll bathe one another while Piggy stands guard, and see what develops from there.” He shrugged. “Or, we can talk about psychological warfare and how it is applied to the Yuuzhan Vong.”
“I’ll take the psychological warfare.”
He nodded. “That’s pretty much what I figured. And since Piggy won’t need to guard us, I expect he’ll be tutoring you in small-unit starfighter tactics.”
She gave Piggy a narrow look. “Did you used to be a starfighter pilot?”
The Gamorrean nodded, causing his jowls and rolls of belly fat to wobble. “I did. I served your father on one campaign.”
“I think he told me about you when I was very young. One of those ‘you can be whatever you want when you grow up’ stories. ‘The Gamorrean Who Became a Fighter Pilot.’ I thought he’d made it up.”
“I have kept a low profile since those days. I have not done much flying.”
“That sort of suggests that you might not have much to teach me about small-unit tactics.”
The Gamorrean smiled, a broadening and curving of his mouth that revealed more teeth—teeth far cleaner and straighter than most Gamorreans enjoyed, Jaina saw. “I think I will surprise you,” Piggy said.
* * *
“Your work in the Hapes Cluster was pretty good,” Sharr said. The three of them were now on top of the biotics building. Below